The “overview effect” is a term used to describe a cognitive shift in awareness reported by some astronauts and cosmonauts during spaceflight, often while viewing the Earth from orbit or from the lunar surface.
It refers to the experience of seeing first-hand the reality of the Earth in space. From space, national boundaries vanish and the planet is seen in its entirety, as an organic and panoramic whole.
Badilla’s use of the expression in this article, first coined by Frank White in 1987, has a very precise purpose here: it refers to perceptual effects as a whole, including emotions, feelings, empathy and the way each individual elaborates perceptions.
Three years on since the start of Francis’ pontificate, an overview effect is perhaps now possible. “Gliding over” the first 33 months of his pontificate, we have put together a list of key aspects which is not, however, exhaustive:
(1) Doctrine and reform
Under Francis’ reign, the Catholic Church is going through a crucial moment and along its current trajectory, it could be tracing the main elements that will characterise it in the upcoming decades.
Pope Francis has set in motion a gradual but firm reform process, which, if steered towards certain points of no return, will turn the process currently underway into an irreversible historical change.
This “plan” is not based on some Bergoglian model or project. The end goal and the path towards it are simple: a return to the essential, to Jesus and his Gospel.
Francis put it like this: “Christian doctrine is not a closed system incapable of generating questions, doubts, interrogatives – but is alive, knows being unsettled, enlivened. It has a face that is not rigid, it has a body that moves and grows, it has a soft flesh: it is called Jesus Christ.” (Florence, 10 November 2015).
This is the true meaning of Pope Francis’ reform and if this is not perceived globally, in its entirety, it is impossible to understand Francis’ pontificate; in fact there is a risk of heading down misleading paths, making statements of minor importance; above all, there is a risk of confusing form with actual substance. Continue reading
Sources
- Vatican Insider, from an article by Luis Badilla, lead editor of the blog site Il Sismografo.
- Image: Catholic World Report
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